Work begun after vacation so I located a nice coworking place for decent internet and a proper desk. :)

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My leg was back in normal state and so were our sunburns, so it was time for diving again. Next week the work starts and both have relatively early mornings, so probably won't be able to dive on the next days. I still have one specialty course to finish though to reach my Master status. :)

So, in the morning we sailed through horrible tropical rain to Chumphon Pinnacle again and did a dive there, unfortunately in the worst visibility so far. The visibility on the rock can vary a lot due to weather and today was not one of the best days. Although we still saw a really cool group of huge barracudas and a couple of other fish.

The next dive was on an another familiar site, White Rock. First octopus here, see how he is successfully pretending to be a rock in the pictures after I approached him.

Huge real Italian pizzas after the dives and we slept an hour or two.. There's a combined Italian pizzeria and a French bakery on the island, owned by people from those countries and they make all the tasty things.

Scooters are handy by the way. I have been driving around with the scooter for two weeks or so and now refueled it for the first time with 3 liters, 2.68eur. The tank is full again. :)

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Some hours after the last two dives my leg started hurting and continued worsening during the night. That could be a symptom of the decompression sickness (nitrogen bubbles stuck in tissues causing damage) which is always a threat to divers, so I became a bit worried and finally called the hotline of the diving insurance organization DAN to ask for guidance.

Their service was actually excellent, without any delay I was able to speak with a Finnish dive-specialist doctor. She couldn't really rule out DCS, although the symptoms did not sound very typical for that, so she suggested I should meet up with a local doctor for assessment. DAN organized me contact information of the local dive doctor who happened to live almost next door to us, so she came to meet me and do the basic neurological tests.

The conclusion was again the same, most likely it would be something else than DCS but DCS couldn't be ruled out either. The only way to be sure would be to visit a hyperbaric chamber which is used to treat diving injuries and especially DCS, but the nearest chamber is on another island, Koh Samui. Also even if it was DCS it would be a very mild case anyway and over 24h were already passed since the beginning of the symptoms, so I would not be in hurry to the chamber. We decided to see how the situation develops overnight and consider next actions in the morning.

Later in the afternoon we were discussing more with the doctor and she was pretty confident the problem was actually not DCS but sciatica, a nerve being pinched in the lower back. The symptoms match perfectly, paracetamol and ibuprofein work (they would not for DCS) and I had very similar leg pain also last summer and a couple of times before.

By the morning the leg was already much better, so our diagnosis of sciatica was most likely correct and no further treatment would be needed. I think I just moved my back somehow in a wrong way with the heavy diving gear on me during the dives. During today almost all pain disappeared, just like it did last summer too in a day or two.

As diving was still not a good idea today we spent the day in another way, chartering a longtail boat for snorkeling around the island. It was actually fun, although I burned my back in the hot sun. :)

Now in the evening the leg is fine and I think we will be even diving tomorrow morning again.

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Two dive courses done, a two dive deep specialization and a theory-only nitrox gas course. Not much else today except those dives and just relaxing.

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Not much happened today. I signed up to some dive courses so I was reading the theory part of them (deep diving and diving on EANx gas mixture) and Iryna was concentrating on her school things. Found an Israeli restaurant too, with tasty food and almost too big portions.

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Today the visibility at the best dive site of the area, Chumphon Pinnacle was supposed to be good so we attemted diving on that huge underwater rock formation. Well, the visibility was not that great.. But still some fish and nice photos.

We also moved to an another hotel, now having a nice and a bit surrealistic villa.

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Just an another slow day. Some dives in the morning, haircut by a ladyboy (the only barber of the island) and food. The other Iryna also arrived today, so we have one more diver for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will also change accommodation but just a couple of hundred meters. This hotel was a bit more expensive for upcoming days, so for the same price we could get a nice bungalow in an another one.

We also resolved our lack of proper coffee by ordering more from Bubba's Roastery on Koh Phangan. There's only instant coffee in the shops, so finding a proper roastery was very welcome. Let's see if our two packages of coffee actually arrive to the next hotel.

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Massage, snorkling a bit and signed up for dives tomorrow morning, that's about all for today. The stairs in the picture are the ones where I fell to the sea last time in 2018 and broke my elbow, by the way.

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Finnair Thai number actually answered in the morning after queuing for some 15 minutes and quickly changed our flight to 12.02. Seems like Finnair allows unlimited amount of changes until the end of February, so if we get bored here earlier we can change the flight to a bit earlier again or then to a week later. Our freshly extended visa is only valid until 19th and cannot be easily extended without more difficult paperwork, so that's the last possible day to exit the country. However, the dive center rumours say some people have already been here like two years due to covid-related eased extension rules.. :)

The other Iryna (the one living in Bangkok and met in Phuket) is also planning to come to Koh Tao, so at least we have more company to be stuck on the island. I think a week or two more on the island would be nice before moving onwards. When my work starts on 24th we should probably attempt to at least find a hotel with better internet connection or move to mainland, as internet is always a bit slow on these islands.

Iryna was still not completely recovered of our stomach problems in the morning, so I had to go diving alone again. Two more dives on the same sites as yesterday with a bit worse visibility but on a better boat. One sea snake and the usual fish and that's it. I think tomorrow I'll take a day off from diving and we could see around the island a bit.

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This time we are taking the "getting stuck at Koh Tao" to an entirely new level. As corona situation in Finland doesn't seem to be too great, a lot of restrictions in place and both work and school are completely remote we decided we could just delay our return a bit. That would require changing the flight and handling the issue of our 30 day visa expiring actually a day before the original flight (although one day overstay is generally allowed).

So, the first thing to sort out is the visa. It can be extended another 30 days in an immigration office, and luckily one has been opened on Koh Tao in the last two years or so. In the morning we searched for a passport photo store, took photos for the visa application and visited the immigration office. It was actually rather quick, in some 15 minutes and 50eur per person we had new stamps in our passports, which would allow stay for another 30 days.

Now we just need to get hold of Finnair customer service somehow.. Their chat is busy, their phone service is busy.. Well, there's a Thai number for the customer service which we could try in the morning. Yesterday I actually managed to contact the chat and they confirmed the flight change is free of charge, so I think we will be changing the flight to 05.02. or 12.02. if we can find an agent to speak to.

In other news, I did some diving while Iryna was writing her school essay. Nothing special again, but good easy dives on current-free and peaceful dive sites near the island.

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